Smoky Cogs

Today is my 31st birthday, and spent the day at home sick.

Now that I am firmly in my thirties, sometimes I feel old. I feel less depressed about birthdays than I did in my mid-twenties, so I think I am just getting used to the idea of getting old.

Another sign that I am getting older is that I just no longer get most movies (think Road Trip etc) and music today just does nothing for me. It is as if I still live in the 80′s sometimes.

Now I just accept that I am in an older generation and move on, so now it is time celebrate a little!

Although the thought lingers, does anyone know when middle-age starts?

I adore opera music. I really do. And I have my mother to blame for that.

You see, when I was 6 years old, my mother took me to see a ballet, The Nutcracker Suite, and ever since then I have had a love for all things theatre, and that includes opera.

The downsides of this of course is that opera is not exactly seen as an “in” art form. People tend to give you strange looks when you sitting next to them in traffic with an Aria from Carmen or The Magic Flute playing loudly in your car.

Well, I, unfortunately, have repeated the mistakes of my mother. I have introduced Cole to opera and ballet, and he now loves it too.

This raised it’s head this weekend. Cinema Nouveau have over the next few months planned to show several recorded versions of operas at the cinema, and I was planning on taking Claudia to go watch a few. Cole, however, told me in no uncertain terms that I dare not leave him out of it. How many 7-year-old’s willingly want to go watch a full opera?

Maybe opera will never die….

The other night I was playing snakes and Ladders with Cole, and realised what a futile game that is.

Most games tend to be a mixture of logic and luck to varying degrees. Chess and checkers are almost wholly logic (which makes them so much more enjoyable to me), while games like Ludo or Jenga or Monopoly have quite a bit more luck thrown in, but still require a lot of thought to do well.

Now Snakes and Ladders is one of the exceptions. There is NO skill involved at all. The winner is solely determined by who gets to the end first based on what numbers you throw on a dice.

It is pretty much a kids version of playing the slots in a casino. I don’t see any thrill in winning a game where you have no control on the outcome. Winning just means you got lucky, and says nothing at all about how good you are.

Yet for some inexplicable reason, of all the games I play with Cole, he loves Snakes and Ladders the most….

When I saw Harry the hamster’s cage this morning, I noticed that that little escape artist had found a way out and was missing.

Searching every hiding place that we could think of, we could find no trace of him at all.

This leads to a few suspects who could be responsible for the disappearance of poor Harry.

Was it Noisette, our Staffie? While she loves to chase small objects and is, by instinct, predisposed to hunting small rodents, she was soundly sleeping next to me on the bed all night last night, so she has a pretty tight alibi.

How about Garfield, our cat? Every day he sits right in front of the hamster cage eying out Harry, just waiting for an opportunity to strike. I think this is unlikely too, since no trace of either a body, or blood has been found anywhere, and besides, as much as Garfield tries, he has never caught anything in his life.

This probably means that he has gone into hiding somewhere. Now the hamster-hunt begins. I found this site which gives a few tips in finding the elusive rodents.

So, will Harry be found dead or alive……and was he murdered? Stay tuned to the next episode of The mystery of the missing hamster

EDIT: Harry has still not been found. This case will just have to be filed as unsolved.

The last few days I have been rather grumpy.  I am the type of guy that when I am grumpy, all I want, is to be left alone to think, and when I am ready I will bounce back.

However, this does not go down too well with Claudia, my girlfriend. She does not quite understand this and usually ends up making both of us feel worse.

But then when I came home, my mood immediately got better. Noisette, our Staffie, greeted me with her usual excitement. Unlike a certain woman (I don’t want to generalise in case I offend some poor woman out there) she doesn’t care whether I am grumpy or happy, she will give me the same joyful greeting irrespective.

Dogs have that special ability to understand their owner, and not hold against him his state of mind.  Maybe this is why man and dog has had such a close bond through the millenia. It is as though we are perfectly suited for each other. A symbiotic relationship like none other.

At long last, I have finally decided to get my blog going.

I hope I manage to entertain you in the coming months and years, and if not, well, I hope that you might just have gleaned a morsel of wisdom or two.

This blog will be about myself and my joys – and frustrations – with life, technology, and everything in between.

Now, to start, for a little bit more about me, for those of you who did not arrived here from my website directly, can be found on my site at smokycogs.com.

Now I am off to go check out the new beta release of Appcelerator Titanium, and catch up on a little bit of other work, but I will be back, and the ride will be good – although I should probably let you be the judge of that.